Got a new Digital Camera, Sony DSC-H1

[DanST4]

The 12x zoom is stabilized so you don't need a tripod. The LCD is 2.5" and easy to see in the sun. It'll do 9 shot bursts at 5M, has shutter speeds up to 1/2000, and ASA 64 up to 400. I like the fact you can set it to full manual and control shutter speed, aperture, and focus. Just like the good 'ol Honeywell Pentax SLR days.

It even shoots movies of decent resolution and quality (640 x 480, 30 fps), with sound, which are time-limited only by the amount of memory on the stick.

Add a couple of 512 memory sticks, batteries, charger, case... man does it ever add up! Someday I'll get a good dSLR but this thing is pretty darn good and easy as pie.

I'll be using it as a non-professional, non-track, general purpose, vacation/party/other stuff photography. I wanted to keep it near $400.

[topgear140]

Nice Camera! I repair cameras, and really like the engineering that goes into Sony's products. I also have a Sony, DSC W7, not quite as fancy, but takes some great photos! The other plus with Sony is the Memory Stick, very stable form of media, and the card reader in the camera works much better than the other format readers especially CF which over time tends to bend pins resulting in all kinds of fun stuff, blown fuses and damaged circuits (did I mention I repair cameras). Congrats on your new camera and remember to format your cards regularly! Cheers

[toddk]

Is it a good camera for shooting porn?

sorry

[DanST4]

Originally Posted by topgear140

... and remember to format your cards regularly! Cheers

Really? Now that's something I do once and never again. Tell me more.

As far as batteries: I bought a good battery charger (LaCrosse BC-900) and I'm surprised how different each battery can be in a pack of four. The charger has multiple modes, one of which is discharge/recharge. In that mode the batteries are discharged before being recharged. The display shows the discharge rate, time of discharge, etc.

Sometimes in a pack of 4 rechargeables, one battery will take 5 or 6 hours longer to discharge than the other three. There is a difference.

[topgear140]

Its true about the batteries, I have found that aftermarket batteries tend to last about half as long as the factory supplied batteries (lifetime). It is important when first charging and discharing batteries to use them completely, some batteries form a memory and have less capacity. Formatting is important because cards can become corrupted, just like any drive, files fragment and pieces remain. Formatting wipes them much more thouroughly than just erasing individual images. You can use the internal format option or do it via the computer.

[DanST4]

These guys tested batteries and did a good job. Half way down the page is a ranking of batteries by minutes. I tested the supplied Sony 1900 batteries against the (newly released) Energizer 2500's, and the Energizers took 9 hours longer to discharge (at 100 mAh); one took 15 hours longer than the OEM batteries!

This camera sucks power more so than some others out there.